Every meal is the end point of a food system: a network of farms, processors, distributors, consumers, and waste streams shaped by the environment, economics, and global trade. Because these parts are connected, a choice made at one point, such as how a crop is grown, ripples outward to affect water, energy, cost, and waste elsewhere. Understanding those ripples takes systems thinking, and testing them takes data.

In this course, students learn to do both. They map how a food system works, then use real data to check whether their picture holds up. Along the way they learn to ask where numbers come from and whether they can be trusted, and to turn raw data into evidence that supports a clear conclusion.
Students apply these ideas by comparing greenhouse and field-grown tomatoes, following the crop from a commercial greenhouse to the point where waste produced becomes energy, collecting data and working in teams to explain what it reveals. They work with many kinds of data, including their own measurements, survey responses, taste ratings, facility records, and public datasets, and learn how qualitative observations become quantitative data.

Students build practical skills step by step, from formulas and data cleaning to charts and what-if analysis. These skills are central to Sustainable Food Systems, a new major in development in the BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department, and students will learn what the major covers and the careers it leads to.

The course is at or above AP level. It builds on topics from AP Environmental Science and AP Statistics but uses real data, college tools, and an open-ended team project. Expectations match an introductory college course. No prior coursework is required beyond Algebra I and basic computer skills. Rigor comes from working with real data and solving open-ended problems.